LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13597, 4 December 1909, Page 7

LITERARY GOSSIP.

The Authors' Society is to be corddalJy congratulated (remarks the "St. James's Gazette") on securing Mr Thomas Hardy for their new president, in succession to Mr George Meredith. Literature has been -worthily represented in this apostolic succession from Tennyson through George Meredith to Mr Thomas Hardy.

"The White Prophet" reminds the New York "Post" of the following couplet aimed at Mr Hall Came some years ago by a witty rhymester:—

He sits Tn a, see-green grotto with a bucket of lurid paint, And paints the thing es it isn't for the God of things as they ain't. This xjithy estimate deserves wide publicity.

Rostand, the French poet and dramatist (author of "Cyrano de Bexgerac"), recently sold the house in which he had lived in Paris. Before parting with the property it is said he sealed up the door, and placed a bronze tablet "to mark the threshold once pressed by the foot of genius." This idea of marking dwellings of great men in their life-time is a process not without its perils (remarks the. New York "Post"). The story is told of. a. German oomposer, that- a friend once said to him: "Well, they appreciate you at least in your native city. On the house where you were bom, they have pieced an inscription." 'Indeed! What does it sayr" "It saye, 'To Let!" ,

The biography of the late W. B. Lecky, the nistorian, contains a delightfully characteristic story of Herbert Spencer:—"ln the evening I dined ffuietly at the Athenseum with Herbert Spencer. . . He has nearly finished the first volume of his 'Sociology,' and seems very confident that it will bo a complete explanation of human life. Hβ finds it, however, longer than he intended, as he Tiad quite forgotten' the existence of one part, 'domeetic relations.' . . However, these, too, will be explained."

Mr Robert W. Chambers was born in America in 1860 "(says 'T.P. s Weekly")- He studied drawing in New York with Mr Dana Gibson. Tn*y ■went together to submit their first contributions to "Life," where Mr Ghambers's drawing was accepted and Mr Gibson's was 'regretted." Sir Chambers afterwards went to Paris, where hd studied at the Ecole dee Beaux Arts and at Julian's. His paintings were accepted at the Salon, where he made his first entry in 1889, at the age of 24. He returned to New York in 1893, where he was busy at first ps an illustrator for "Life" and other periodicals. It occurred to Sim to make literary use of his Paris student experience, and his ,7 ln tho Quarter" ■was published on the year of bis r<vturn. Tho stage claimed his interest for a n-hile, and Angustin Daly was determined to make- a playwright of him. but Mr Daly's d«ath interrupted the experiment, so Mr Chambers returned to his interests as an author.

Some little while ago, when University Colleee, Oxford, was enduring the scoffs of literary persons for having expelled Shelley, Mr Andrew Lang was «t pains to demonstrate in a magarino article what a singularly impossible undergraduate Shelley was (remarks tho 'St James's He has now, in the "Illustrated London News " put the other side of the same truth in pointing out what unfit nurseries for pemns our public schools aro. Mr Lane thinks with "Wordsworth that children come in their infancy trailing clouds of glory. But boys do not trail those clouds of glory long in the atmosphere oi a public, or eren of a public elementary, school. Schoolboy glory has more to do with cricket and football not with the heaven that lies about us in our infancy. So schoolboys have no use for schoolfellows like Shelley. It is, sav 3 Mr Lang, the lads like Shelley and K. L. Stevenson, who decline to cease to be themselves, and who reso-

lutely retain «a«kaiural tastes,_ that become men assuredly have been fairly.impossible at Eton or Harrow. Hβ wa»;r»sher a problem in any conventional society, what was Edinburgh society to think of a. young man who -went about in a 'porkpie hat embroidered with silver, a velvet jacket, and a Spanish cloak, and came to evening parties ma dfees coat, a blue flannel shirt, a knitted tie, pep-per-and-salt trousers, silk cocks, and patent-leather shoes, while hw hair fell to his collar? But he had his reward. He never failed to make friends in unconventional society The ( teb. mony is the pleaaant account i#%Cornhill" of his friendship with Julea Simoneau, the Frenct keeppr, of Monterey S^ T ««» f™ Simoneau nearly all hls Tg£ never sold his books.

Mr Frank Cole, who J**"*^ Mr Pierpont Morgan for £800 a quantity of (Srgo Meredith's was for thirty years the f»»*» f *jL**j; vant of the novelist-poet as «•£*»«£ handy man, and body servant. . liws in a pretty cottage in th«"™»g of West Humble, a mile **•**££«« cottage of his old master at BoxhUl. Writing about a vi>it to Mr Colo*, a correspondent of fhe "Daily Mail reports :-'•Sometimes," .Mr Cole sari, •when T worked for him Jrst he would write all day, and other "Says he would do little, or nothing. H* never seemed to care about his own comfort. *™ uld at first to sleep all the round ?„ the little chalet ?ear his house,an* he would get out ot bed every morning to let mc in until I suggested that he would save himself from cat if ho cave mc a key. His on y »« su ™«| Ivor* Koo.l wine and good «?? rs fe *r? he was a splendid judge of both. Every now and then he would have a bit of luck and get hold of some cious trine", and this always deligntea him." • .